As many students may know, Administration held a meeting last Monday for each grade. During the meeting, many controversial topics were discussed, but something that I feel not enough people are talking about is Westborough High Schools new campaign: Caught Doing Good.

Caught Doing Good is WHS’s way of ensuring students are doing random acts of kindness, and when “caught” by a teacher doing something good, the student will receive a laminated card which they can “cash in” for a small prize. The issue that other students and I have with this reward system is: why are we being rewarded for doing kind acts when those acts should already be expected?

Westborough High School likes to pride themselves on being a school that raises students who go off into the world being as kind as they can be. But when students graduate from high school and are no longer getting rewarded or acknowledged for being kind, that’s where the issues start to come into play. If you are teaching young adults to be kind so you can benefit by winning a prize, these young adults are going to walk into the real world and be in for a surprise when they do something kind and don’t always get something out of it.

I understand the concept and good intention of Caught Doing Good, but to me the whole idea of it just seems wrong. Students should be kind even if they are not being watched and rewarded and Caught Doing Good. My hope is that students will choose to be kind even if no one was watching.